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The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

arxiv.org

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Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#851

Post by jacquesm »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #828
jacquesm wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy storage and distribution alone can affect all three of your examples and they are very trivial ones. Then there is medicine, possibly a better shot at fusion and so on. Better electric cars are at the bottom of my wish list (because they're still cars). But yes, those too (much lighter but more powerful motors means you can do away with the drive train completely and it would also allow you to get rid of the b…

okay, could you be more spesific - what kind of improvement can we expect in storage? Is the improvement measurable - like will I be able to buy more kilowathours of storage per dollar?

You'll be able to buy more KWh of storage per dollar (but likely not initially) and it will be relatively dense compared to current - pun intended - options and very likely have a much higher number of cycles (because there is no chemical cycle, just electron movement). The 'if only we had a room temperature superconductor' list of inventions that got temporarily shelved is longer than my arm, the words 'game changer' were never more applicable. If it is replicated. If it can manufactured competitively. If it (or a variation) works at higher current densities.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#852

Post by jacquesm »

yyyk wrote: post #749
tsimionescu wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the biggest envisioned possibility is superconducting power lines. Those would allow long-distance power transfer with minimal losses. In the most idealistic scenario, you could imagine a belt of solar power plants around the globe connected by superconducting power lines, providing solar power 24h a day. Of course, there are huge hurdles to such a project even if we did have the superconducting lines, but…

>In the most idealistic scenario, you could imagine a belt of solar power plants around the globe connected by superconducting power lines There's no technical impairment for doing this with current tech, and it's not clear the new tech is cheaper. Power lines are already very efficient, especially the long-distance ones. We would save a bit on converting from HVDC to AC but that's also very efficient.

There absolutely is. Once you think about this on a global scale HVDC doesn't quite cut it. You can extend the day/night cycle by a few hours each way, which is already very impressive but it isn't enough to cover 24 hours and it definitely isn't going to help you in winter when you want to transport energy from the sunny hemisphere to the darker one.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#853

Post by jacquesm »

MisterTea wrote: post #790
jacquesm wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth are you up to? :)

Nothing crazy ;-) Actually I'm just playing with plasma electron sources for heating/welding/melting.

Neat. I had a Thermal Dynamics 12 KW plasmacutter and a rig to control it across three axis. Best tool I ever owned bar none. From thinking about something to having it in your hand in a couple of minutes in steel up to 1" thick. Amazing toy.

I figured out that by moving it faster than it can cut you can 'score' steel and if you use that creatively you can make fold-at-the-lines steel structures that you then weld up on the edges. You can make super complex stuff like that in no time at all and you usually don't need any jigs other than a few magnets to line things up prior to tack welding.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#854

Post by jacquesm »

beambot wrote: post #823
jacquesm wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dancing pig. The thing to appreciate is not how well it dances but that it dances at all .

Riff on this: When your product is a monkey reciting Shakespeare while standing on a box in Central Park, you don't start by building the box.

That's funny! I think I may have been guilty of box building a couple of times. Nice boxes... but still... no monkey.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#856

Post by londons_explore »

justahuman74 wrote: post #680
techdragon wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty solid trend line, new superconductor, first batch is usually kinda shitty, but proves the basics, refining the mix nails down its exact performance characteristics. It’s spongy grainy crap indeed… but as long as their analysis holds up to scrutiny and replication… and whoa boy do I bet there are people already trying to replicate this result as I’m typing my reply and reading the rest of the…

As someone who doesn't follow superconductors, what sorts of things about life/engineering/society would change, how dramatic would it be, and more importantly: which stocks would you pick :)

Note that when we invented the aeroplane, uses weren't immediately obvious.

People would have suggested things like cities in the sky, looking down on things, and traversing marshland easily.

The actual main use for planes has turned out to be fast long distance travel. But we don't actually theoretically need to be up in the air to travel fast or far - in fact, had we never invented the aeroplane, we'd probably have cars or trains by now that moved as fast as present day planes do.

The revolutionary effect of new inventions is often hard to see, particularly for basic science research like superconductors.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#857

Post by olddustytrail »

arcticbull wrote: post #843
olddustytrail wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit?

> Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit? Why is that a goal? Zero-carbon electricity is a goal, so that we don't all sink. Profit isn't. If ever there were a job for taxpayer dollars, IMO, this is it. "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in t…

You were just talking about how cheap nuclear was. That's a rapid backtrack.

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#858

Post by dang »

jeepers6 wrote: post #855
dang wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how HN works. It set off the flamewar detector, as foota indicated. We've turned that off now.

Joke failed successfully.

I didn't think you meant the latter bit literally but the former bit was isomorphic to $frequent-misperception so I figured I'd better respond in kind!

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#859

Post by arcticbull »

olddustytrail wrote: post #857
arcticbull wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit? Why is that a goal? Zero-carbon electricity is a goal, so that we don't all sink. Profit isn't. If ever there were a job for taxpayer dollars, IMO, this is it. "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in t…

You were just talking about how cheap nuclear was. That's a rapid backtrack.

Not at all. I quoted the US EIA in that 7.7c/kWh figure on the pre-subsidy LCOE of plants coming online in 2023. It was listed in my [2].

"In 2019 the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period" [old 2, sourced from new 1]

The response to you was a separate opinion on the role of government in the energy sector. After all, we've put trillions of subsidies into fossil fuels the least we could do is put money into something that solves problems instead of creating new ones. I also said I don't care whether it's public or private funds that are used to construct it.

Really nothing at that scale is built without subsidies, but the 7.7c/kWh rate was before subsidies.

Did I miss something? I thought I answered your question with that figure and its origin, it sounds like exactly what you wanted to know. I don't know which precise power plants they included but it's probably in [1].

[edit] I guess it's weird that we're so stuck on this one specific technology. What's the un-subsidized cost of oil power when the price of oil is set by OPEC, externalities aren't factored in, and every time it goes up we unload the Strategic Oil Reserve? How do you price in drilling in ANWR?

Coal, I mean, it's all unpriced externalities - death, environmental toll.

Solar 90% of the panels come from China, how much does the PRC subsidize the plants and materials that go into making the panels for their own geopolitical goals? Rare earths for wind? They all come from China too. Lithium for storage?

My question is sort of more "can anyone name any utility scale power project of any type that was built by a private entity without government subsidies of any sort? Why would they do that if they didn't have to? What does that even mean? And really, does that even matter?"

[1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

Re: The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?

#860

Post by jacquesm »

Filligree wrote: post #771
jacquesm wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Room temperature super conductors don't quench. Or at least, not until they reach the temperature at which they no longer work as superconductors, which for this one is 127 degrees Celsius . That does make for an interesting failure mode if anything should every cause a small spot on a longer conductor to reach that temperature...

"Beam of light shooting the heavens" value of "interesting", yes. Though I suppose it would look like a small tactical nuke in effect.

No, at the breach it will just burn up until the arc dissipates. But it will be an impressive fireworks display. A superconductor is in the end just another conductor, it has a well defined current carrying capacity while superconducting and if it stops doing that then that current will suddenly see an increased resistance, how much current is moving through it at the time it failes determines how fast and how violent it burns out when it goes, but it won't be unlike another transmission line failure. Those are still very impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zib4IV2TIg

It stays lit until the breaker goes at 3:57.

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